Review of Y Tu Mamá También (2001) by Manny C — 11 Jan 2011

Movies don't get much hotter than Y Tu Mama Tambien, a teen road comedy about two young studs who learn to see the important things beyond what's between their legs. Rich boy Tenoch (Diego Luna) and middle class hombre Julio (Gael Garcia Bernal) could care less about the tense politics and poverty that pervades their native Mexico City. Getting laid is all that matters to them. Tenoch and Julio are close, two seventeen-year-olds with a jones for laying out on diving boards and having simultaneous jerk offs. But their worlds are thrown out of whack when both their girlfriends take off on a vacation in Italy.

So what are they left to do? Find more girls to screw of course. They encounter Luisa (Maribel Verdu) at a wedding. Louisa is a twenty-eight year old babe married to Tenoch's cousin. The two boys entice Luisa with talk (lies of course) of a beach paradise--"Boca del Cielo---that they plan on driving to. Luisa turns down their offer flat, knowing she's out of their league. But when she finds out her husband is cheating on her she decides to take the boys up on their offer and school them in the ways of the flesh.

Out of that set-up comes Y Tu Mama Tambien, a knockout of a film from Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron, who up until then was best known for two U.S. films, A Little Princess and Great Expectations. With Y Tu Mama Tambien, Alfonso crafts a deliciously erotic script with his brother Carlos that takes remarkably unexpected comic and dramatic turns. Also on hand is Cuaron's longtime collaborator, cinematographer extraordinaire Emmanuel Lubezski, who gives the sex scenes a smoldering intensity. They're exhilarating. While at a motel, Tenoch comes out of the shower and finds Luisa ready for him. She brushes her face against his crotch with a palpable sensuality that doest cheapen itself into pornography. Julio is watching the both of them, with a simultaneous look of toxic jealousy and arousal. When Julio has Luisa alone later, in the car, he gropes her madly, hands and mouth all over her breasts, and then she shows him how to channel that carnal energy into something worthwhile.

There are no American Pie shenanigans in this film. Fucking a pie is not an option. Here sex is treated as what it is: pleasuring and dangerous. In this film sex reveals the hidden secrets of its participants. The resentment building between Julio and Tenoch underscores they're homoerotic tendencies and attraction to one another. Luisa has secrets too, and they're far more tragic. Things become even more compelling when the boys do discover the beach they didn't even think existed; it's being destroyed by developers---but what they find while there is more eye-opening for them than anything. Bernal and Luna are amazing together, radiating lust and teenage angst marvelously. And Verdu is a revelation, a beautiful combo of delicate grace and striking ferocity. She gives the film a gravity through her character's hard-won wisdom and touching humanity.

Along with fellow Mexican directors Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Amores Perros) and Guillermo Del Toro (Devil's Backbone), cinema experienced a welcome resurgence of Mexican filmmaking that only got better as the decade went on (Babel, Children of Men, Pan's Labyrinth). Y Tu Mama Tambien is still a hot-blooded, touching and haunting film that never loses sight of real feeling. This is a film full of naked bodies, and even more stripped down emotions. These were the kinds of movies of the last ten years that shamed Hollywood fluff. Y Tu Mama Tambien may be in Spanish but nothing is lost in the translation.